The art and business of film with Bob Strauss

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Everyone wants to watch the ‘Watchmen’

Figuring most everyone at Comic-Con has already seen the “Watchmen” trailer since it was shown before multiplex showings of “The Dark Night,” director Zack Snyder cut together three and a half minutes of footage that he said highlighted the “non-PG aspects of the movie.”

“Watchmen” is dark. During the Q&A portion of Friday’s panel presentation, one fan asked Snyder if he had tried to balance out the nihilistic spirit of the film’s graphic novel source material.

“Why would we want to do that?” Snyder replied good-naturedly. “I mean, we never sat and thought, ‘Oh, this movie is going down a dark path. People are going to slit their wrists in the movie theater.’

” ‘Saw’ is dark because people get their arms sawed off,” Snyder continued. “Well, people get their arms sawed off in our movie, too. But for a MORAL CAUSE. To teach a lesson!”

The wordless footage, scored partly to what sounded like Phillip Glass and featuring many images already revealed in the trailer, covered the bases, introducing each of the superheroes and their dilemmas, ending with Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Comedian being thrown through a plate-glass window of a high rise.

As the glass shattered and the Comedian fell, we saw the iconic, blood-stained “Watchmen” smiley-face button, dropping to the ground with him.

The panel featured Snyder and artist Dave Gibbons, who collaborated with Alan Moore on the novel. When asked if Moore, who has disavowed the movie and his profit share in the movie (just as he has most every other film adaptation of his work), could ever be brought on board, Gibbons laughed.

“I see there is an elephant in the room,” Gibbons said. “I wish that Alan could feel the same kind of joy I’m feeling now. I wish he hadn’t had such a bad experience in the past.”

Recognizable names, yes. But not necessarily recognizable faces, which was the point of the casting process.

“If it had been say, Jude Law, playing (MG’s character), it would have taken you out of it,” Snyder says. “When people see it, they’ll say that world. Not: That’s not some actor dressed up like a guy. It happened on ‘300’ too. No one knew those guys. It was just ‘300.’ ”

For Synder, it’s all about the source material, which he referred to constantly as “the bible.”

“People are asking me if the movie is going to comment on modern times and today’s mass culture,” Snyder told me yesterday. “It’s not. The comic asks a lot of moral questions, but you’ve got to answer them yourself. That’s the beauty of it.”